The Forest of Peldain

“Slime carpet! Run! Run! No, not that way—through the bushes! For the sake of the gods, get out of here! Forget the wagons—leave them!”

The screamed words hung like tangible things in the air, usurping any authority Vorduthe might have exerted. He had not expected ever to see Octrago panic, yet he seemed close to panic now. Everywhere the moss was breaking up in tatters, like a skin of mold on a stirred jelly. And jelly was how best to describe what was revealed beneath—a light green goo through which men found themselves wading, and in which all the wagons were now sinking gently, as if into a bog.

As the jelly touched the skin of his ankles Vorduthe felt a stinging sensation, and quickly guessed that the stuff was capable of digesting flesh, like so much else in this accursed forest. But now he saw that the slime carpet was not merely a passive devourer. It was becoming active. It was aroused. It developed whirls which sucked men down into it. It extruded tongues which crept up men’s legs, seized and held them, inexorably dragging them into its embrace.

It rippled like a pond in a breeze. Then, at the far end, it reared up in a wave like the waves that traveled over the sea in a strong wind, nearly as tall as a man. This wave swept down the whole area defined by the ragged lines of bushes, surging round the tree trunks and standing wagons. It knocked men down like stalks, and where it had passed they lay stuck in the slime like insects in honey, struggling feebly and vainly to free themselves.

Octrago was running through the gelid muck with a peculiar prancing gait. Vorduthe was about to try the same when a tentacle of surprisingly firm, fast-thickening slime wrapped itself round his left knee.

At that moment Octrago turned back. He saw Vorduthe about to be pulled off-balance. He pranced back to him, seized him by the arm and yanked, pulling him free of the slippery tongue.

Already Vorduthe’s knee was numb; his left leg would not support him properly. Cursing, Octrago half-dragged him toward the bushes. Though he seemed unaware of it, he was gabbling manically.

“What a fool I was! Missed the signs! Damned carelessness—quick! Quick!”

They were not the first to escape the slime carpet and crash into the bushes. All about them were the grunts of men and the breaking of stems. Then they broke suddenly into a tiny clearing, where Octrago looked about him wildly.

“Dart-thorns!” he yelled. “This way, my lord!”

Abruptly the air was thick with the zipping thorns, shot from shrubs and bushes screened by the more innocent varieties they had burst through. Flinging his arm in front of his face—a useless gesture, Vorduthe thought—Octrago pulled him through an opening to clear ground beyond. But it was too late. Vorduthe had been struck by perhaps a dozen penetrating points. Vaguely he became aware that the Peldainian was frantically brushing the thorns from his skin. His senses swimming, he felt a presentiment of death. Then consciousness slipped from him.

Chapter Seven

In his dream Lord Vorduthe found himself drifting, a breeze-driven ghost, through the limpid greenness of the forest. Cage tigers and man-grab trees snapped about him, shoot tubes lunged toward him. But none of them could touch him. He was dead, and insubstantial like sea mist.

So dead that he rose smoke-like through the forest’s roof, temporarily losing himself in a close tangle of leaf, branch, bud and every kind of surprising growth, before gaining the clear air to go drifting over the dazzling ocean. And suddenly he was in the Hundred Islands.

That was when death turned into a nightmare. Happenings at home were just as Lord Korbar had warned and he had secretly feared. An army of cruel primitives rampaged through Arcaiss, a horde of brown-skinned Orwanians, always the least civilized of the peoples of the Hundred Islands, ever half-eager to revert to the savage practices of their forebears. For the Orwanians had been ardent cannibals until restrained by Arelian conquest, and they still worshipped their traditional god Krax, who ate the flesh of men.

Flame and smoke billowed over sundrenched Arcaiss. In the royal palace the dreaming Vorduthe beheld a terrible sight: the Monarch of the Hundred Islands, King Krassos himself, spread-eagled over a brazier, face contorted, his skin crackling. And in the streets were fires and cooking grids, and the buildings echoed to the dreadful cries of men, women and children who were being roasted alive for the pleasure of the brown savages.

Vorduthe looked up to the headland where his own home was situated. Against his will his spirit was drawn there, passing through the cool rooms to the interior courtyard. He saw a band of grinning savages, their teeth filed, carrying the paralyzed form of his wife to the fire they had prepared.